If you are using our chat room page you may notice it looks a little different today. We have decided to discontinue development on our own Chat room and instead use Tiny Chat for the chat room feature. Over all Tiny Chat has more features then the Spruz chat room. We have decided to do this so we can focus our development resources toward other areas of the platform that are extremely important to our users. Tiny Chat has all the same features of our built in chat room, plus it allows for video chat.

We also recommend Skysa (www.skysa.com) as another integrated Chat system. To add a Skysa bar to your website go to Manage Site > Settings > Member Bar and follow the instructions.

Email Broadcast Changes - Our Spam complaints have been going up due to the Email Broadcasts and improper usage. To help correct this we have added an automatic preview of your message before you send it and there is a limit on the number of email broadcasts you can send per week.

Member Questions Adjustments - We had added a preview option so you can directly view how the questions will look on your pages. You can also change the Field Set Label "About You"

Viewing Member Information - Viewing of email and ip address is no longer a premium only feature.

New Image Uploader - We have corrected a problem that would happen for IE users that if you uploaded one image to a comment or blog then tried to upload a second image you couldn't and the uploader will now properly response back the max size for a file upload if the image is too big.

We have a rather large update that will be released early Thursday morning that will help improve performance and add some much needed (Like unique display names) functionality to the platform. Sites may need to be taken down from 9am until 11am EDT on Thursday as part of the update.

We are pleased to announce a new standardized way to upload images throughout your site and your site administration area. The new upload tab will appear next to any input field that accepts an image URL.

One example is in the rich text editor you can see in the comment areas, forums and blogs; instead of having the Upload option as a main tab in the insert image dialog, you and your users can use the upload button right next to the field to input the image URL.

Using the option will be quite easy for you and your members: click the button, select the image you want to upload, and once it has uploaded the URL to your file is automatically inserted into the input field.

Follow-up addition to this feature will be site controls to set who can upload images, and the addition of uploading files to expand file sharing.

Additional Updates:

We have added the ability for site owners to resend confirmation e-mails to users that have not yet confirmed their e-mail address. This was always possible for the user to request a new confirmation e-mail, however site owners wished to be able to re-send the confirmation in some cases, so that has been added.

Style adjustments to the Rich Text Editor toolbar, now the buttons display much nicer when the editor is narrow, and has improved collapsing that gives the editor a better look in confined sections of your site such as the sides.

We fixed an issue that caused the Export Theme and Upload Favicon options to be hidden when the site theme was in full Custom CSS mode.

Plus as usual we have crushed a number of bugs reported by you!

As with all updates, if you encounter problems please open a support ticket. Commenting is for general feedback about an update.

We have published a new platform update today that brings new enhancements and answers some of our top requested items.

Forum Improvements

Editing Posts. We have improved the edit post option to load inline with the reply, this also fixes a problem that would happen when someone would copy in bad/broken HTML that would case the edit option to break. Now no matter what you should be able to edit a post that is broken.

Changing the Thread Topic. When you edit the first post in a thread you will have the option to edit the threads topic.

New Filter Added. If you are an moderator or forum administrator you have a new filter option called Pending Approval if you have. This will display if there are topics waiting your approval.

Post Counts. We made a change in how post counts are updated. This was done to improve the load time of forum pages, however some users may have a 0 post count until they post there next topic or reply in the forums.

Iphone/Ipad Compatibility. We have added new functionality to our rich text editors that now allow users to post, edit or reply to topics in the forums using these devices.

Other key improvements

Performance. This is a key area we are continually working on as we finish adjusting to our huge influx of new Spruz site creators. We have made several improvements in the last 24 hours that should increase overall page load times and add stability to your website. We are continually making tweaks and adjustments in this area. We hope to have all stability issues resolved by early next week.

Comment Box Rich Text Editors. You can now enjoy rich text editors on all Comment boxes. Rich text editors make it easy to format text that appear in comments. We will have controls that will allow you to customize the options members have access to in the editors.

Broadcast Email Rich Text Editor. Next time you broadcast an email you will notice a full editor. This editor has been added to make it much easier to format the messages you send to your users.

Donation Element. We have changed the donations element to only show donations from the last 30 days.

Plus a range of bug fixes and issue solved thanks to your reports via support ticket.

Just a reminder about our commenting rules: if you encounter a problem, DO NOT COMMENT about it. Go straight to Spruz.com and click on Support to open a ticket and tell us about it. You will be surprised at how quickly we work to solve bugs reported.

For the last week we have focused our development on some key areas that our users have requested in forums and usability improvements we have identified through support tickets. Here are the updates:

Member Email Notifications

We are continuing our improvements to the e-mail notifications users receive for activity related to them on your community. Users can now receive notifications to their email for updates to conversations they are a part of, when others comment on content they have added (photos, videos, etc), forum threads they have started, when their content is featured, friend requests and much more. Users can now manage what they receive notifications for from their account settings.

Forums

We added the option to edit signatures directly on forum posts. Now users do not need to go to a forum settings page to edit their signature, they can access the feature directly on any of their forum posts. By doing this we have also been able to make it easy for forum moderators to edit an offensive user signature as well.

We have removed the forum avatar option. The user pic shown in the forums is now the same as everywhere else on the site; the user’s profile picture.

Under the forums search box we have replaced the forum settings link with a “My Subscriptions” link. This shows all the current threads the user is subscribed to, gives them quick access to see updates and gives them an easy way to unsubscribe if they desire.

Groups

We have improved the way you approve members that are waiting to join your groups. Now the Approve/Decline option is directly on the page and easily accessible, instead of having to hover over the user pic to see the option. We have also improved group creation to give better feedback for errors when creating a group, such as already having a group by the same name.

Profiles / Members

We added a way to quickly see user’s answers to your member questions from the Manage Members area. Just click on the edit option next the member to show what they answered. This can be done for pending members as well if you wish to filter out who joins your network due to how they answer your questions.

An option to disable users editing their profiles has been added to the profile settings page. Super Admins will still be able to edit profiles as needed when editing is turned off for users.

Support System

The support area has been re-designed to make options such as replying to an existing ticket and opening a new one for a new issue more obvious. This, along with other improvements we have made to ticket management on our end, will make the support system more efficient; meaning we will be able to answer you and solve any issues faster than ever.

Dialog and Settings Windows

In this update we have also worked to standardize all the dialog and settings pop-up windows to work the same way as the site management windows. This improves user experience for things such as the Rich Text Editor element, allowing you to resize and move the editing window to give you a more flexible work environment.

Additional Adjustments and Fixes

Control what people can edit on their profiles: You have a some newoptions in your Profile settings allow you to control if members can add elements, widgets and move elements.

Viewing Custom Questions: When you view a member in your in your Member Management area you can now quickly view the answers to your custom questions. This comes in handy if you don't use the about me element on profiles or you member has removed that element.

Blog Page Style Fixes: We have adjusted the blog page style and structure to give better separation between blog entries and also make them easier to target with custom CSS for extended styling flexibility.

Image and Appearance Fixes: We have fixed issues with specific images being used in the Appearance customization. This addresses several issues that were possible when using images with UPPERCASE file extensions and in the custom CSS and modifiers if you had quotes around your image URL.

Performance Improvements

Due in a large part to the latest influx of former Ning users, we have put a high priority on making sure page load time on the platform is not effected as our user base grows. In this update we have made several core optimizations that should greatly improve consistency in page load time moving forward and keep the sites snappy for you and your members.

As with any major update there is a chance for problems and issues. If you encounter issues please let us know about them in a support ticket. DO NOT post issues in comments. We welcome your feedback

Some Inbox changes have been made because, many people have brought up some interesting issues with understanding how the internal email system works when a person is a member of more then one website.

Traditionally this system was designed to aggregate your messages from all sites so if you were anywhere in the network you could manage all of your messages from any Spruz powered website.

Unfortunately many people found this confusing, so in order to solve this problem your main Inbox will only display messages for the network you are on. We still want to alert you when you have messages from other networks, when you have unread messages sent to you from other websites in the network will notice an "Other Networks" category directly below the Inbox category that will also display the number of unread messages.

More Email Notifications changes are coming, we are completing our latest round of improvements to this to add a greater level of control over the types of notices you receive from network activity in one easy to use location. You should expect to see this change rolled out over the weekend or by Monday at the latest.

In addition to the above, I like to remind everyone we have made range of small adjustments or fixes that you may or may not notice.